Location

Hometown

#00372

Naruby Schlenker, Ordoro

Bio

Naruby Schlenker is a co-founder of Ordoro, a web app that helps small-­ and medium-­sized e-­commerce retailers manage their orders, inventory, and supply chains.

Founded in 2010, Ordoro streamlines everything that happens after a shopper checks out on an online retailer’s website, including inventory management, drop shipping, supplier integration, and the creation and printing of packing lists and shipping labels.

Before moving to Austin for her MBA at UT's McCombs School of Business, Naruby worked for Eli Lilly and Co., rotating through several finance-related positions, including an assignment in her native Venezuela where she discovered her strengths in sales and marketing.

Most recently, Naruby has been heading efforts on MakeShipHappen, an online resource being developed in a partnership between Ordoro and Austin-based Big Commerce, dedicated to helping online retailers quickly get up and running with drop shipping.

[Photo by René Lego Photography]

TRANSCRIPT

WHERE ARE YOU FROM AND HOW DID YOU LAND IN AUSTIN?

I'm originally from Caracas, Venezuela, and I moved to Austin in 2008 to go to McCombs (The University of Texas McCombs School of Business) for my MBA, and the city just grabbed me. It's been a great fit, and I don't see myself leaving anytime soon.

TELL US ABOUT THE NAME...

So, when we came up with the name for Ordoro, all the co-founders, we could all say, were not necessarily native English speakers. But when we started sharing with friends, they would kind of get stuck at the "Ord" part, because a lot of people have a hard time saying it.

We love it. Now it's become part of our company image, so we keep it. Even though it's hard to say, once you get it right, you don't forget it.

WHAT DOES ORDORO DO FOR IT'S CUSTOMERS?

When the idea for Ordoro first started, we were thinking of doing an inventory optimization tool, and when we started calling these merchants and asking them, "Would you be interested in optimizing your inventory? How much would you pay for it?" we found out that they could care less.

They couldn't even get the orders out the door, they had no idea how much inventory they had on hand, and we realized that the needs were further down than where we thought they were. That was a key step in us identifying the pain and being able to start a company that fits a need.

For people selling stuff online, Ordoro is a software that helps them print shipping labels, manage their orders, manage their inventory, connect to their suppliers. Basically, Ordoro picks up where their shopping cart drops off.

And this is really important today because we see trends -- people are selling, not just on their shopping cart. But they're also selling on marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and they need one central place to be able to connect all those channels, keep inventory in sync, and manage their orders.

WHERE DO YOU FIT IN AT ORDORO?

What I contribute to the Ordoro team is -- it might sound cliché -- but I really love connecting with people, and that's really helped us in building relationships with our partners, and I also think I'm pretty good at identifying skills in people, seeing what they're really good at, and then leveraging that, which has really helped us build a great team.

We just had an investor come and visit and get to know the team. He paid us the best compliment that anyone could pay us. He said, "You guys have an extremely strong team, very complimentary, and if this team can't solve the problem that you're trying to solve, I don't know who can." So that was definitely very, very inspiring.

WHY AUSTIN?

What I think is special about Austin are the people in Austin. I've lived in other places in the U.S., and when I moved to Austin it was just very refreshing. Strangers talk to you on the street. It's a lot more like my home country in Latin America. People are just more open and have a really positive energy about them. The whole city has this positive energy that is a little bit addictive.

WHAT LIES AHEAD FOR AUSTIN?

I think that it's going to be an even stronger tech hub than it is today. The other day was really exciting for me to see a billboard targeting startups, advertising to startups. I think we're just going to keep seeing more and more of those billboards. But I truly hope that Austin keeps a little bit of that weirdness and small city feeling.

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE AS A WOMAN IN TECH?

As a woman in tech and in entrepreneurship, what I can do is provide support to other women that want to get in. This is a lot of fun. I don't understand why more women are not doing it, because it's a blast.

WHY WE ARE_AUSTIN TECH?

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